Channel Dash Project

I’m starting my work on the Channel Dash project for Enfilade 2016. For those of you that don’t know much about this, the Channel Dash is the nickname given to the German Operation Cerberus where the German battleships Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen sailed from Brest to German ports through the English Channel in February 1942. As the ships passed through the Channel they were attacked by British aircraft (both the Fleet Air Arm and Royal Air Force) and the Royal Navy (MTBs/MGBs and destroyers). In the end, all the German ships were able to get through to the German ports, but all the capital ships took some damage. The operation was considered successful from the German point of view and a bit of an embarrassment for the British.

This is a joint project that my friend Kevin and I are working on with two planned scenarios. One scenario will cover the air attacks and the other will cover the MTB/MGB attack. I thought about doing the destroyer attack, but since we are using 1/600 or 1/700 scale ships, it seems like that would have needed a lot more table space.

Kevin is providing the British aircraft and a German torpedo boat, while I’m taking on the other German ships and the British MTBs/MGBs. Right now I’m getting all the German ships together for the game. I’ve got 1/700 models of Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and Prinz Eugen from Tamiya, the 1/700 scale destroyer Z-7 Hermann Schoemann from Trumpeter models (this is the 1942 version of this destroyer, so it should be perfect for the game) and 1/600 scale Type 24 torpedo boat from the old Skytrex line (now available from Heroics and Ros). I’ll be working on putting these together and painting them up over the next few weeks. I also have some S-boats that I can add in to the game as options.

Speaking of painting, I have some good images for the paint schemes for the capital ships (see below) and destroyer. I just need to find one for the torpedo boat.

Prinz Eugen camo scheme for the Channel Dash

Gneisenau camo scheme for the Channel Dash

Scharnhorst camo scheme for the Channel Dash

From a modelling aspect, the none of the capital ship models seem to be exactly for the Channel Dash time-frame. All of those ships had additional light anti-aircraft guns added for the operation, but I’m guessing none of the gamers will notice the missing guns. I’ll have to check to see if there are any other modifications and might need to make some changes to the models.

It should be an interesting project.